Patrik Stridvall wrote:
One fly in the legal ointment is that while the headers may not be copyrighable, the shrinkwrap license may still be legal as a contract. There's a case where a court suggested that someone who buys a copy of a product that contains a shrinkwrap license agreement and unwraps it is legally bound to follow it, while the person who later finds the unwrapped CD 'on the street' with no such license is allowed to copy the portions that are unprotected by copyright.
If that is so, wouldn't it mean that if you have a pirated copy of the headers you can legally copy and distribute parts that are unprotected by copyright. :-)
According to the analysis I've read on the case, that's exactly right:
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/property/alternative/minassian.html
-Gav